I AM...ABOVE AVERAGE

I am “above average”
My life is just fine.
I’m trapped in the middle
With no way to shine.

I’ve never been on drugs
Or out on the street.
Nothing to rise above,
I’m already strip.

My parents are living
Money-wise, they’re well.
They’re less kind and supportive
For that, I’m in hell.

But sometimes, just sometimes
It can’t be controlled
If you’re born better off
Or out in the cold.

“Your parents make enough

Anf they cannot cover you!”
But they don’t understand,
I have siblings, too.

Too rich to qualify
But too poor to pay
I am a Nigerian, middle class,
And I’m not okay

I never thought I’d say
“I wish my life stunk;
Then people would listen
Not toss me like junk.”

I do have depression;
Now I seem unique.
But I will not use it
For show, like a freak.

I guess I’m a soft head.
And also not deranged
Do I have to use these traits
To truly prevail?

When I think I have won
The prize always goes
To the gut-wrenching story
The prejudice shows.

I may not seem helpless,
Weak, or downtrodden
But I still deserve help
To not hit rock bottom

Deep down, I’m a writer
I love to speak up
For the weak and voiceless
Who truly need help

I want to change the world
Just give me a chance
I may not seem special
Outside at first glance

It’s what’s inside that counts
Not gender or race
I’m counting on others
To offer me grace.

So what must I do?

PAY ATTENTION TO ME

I have great potential
I promise, you’ll see!

LIFE LESSONS

LIFE is too ironic for me.

There is a lot of things that i see far more contradicting than what it has to be.

For instance, to find happiness you need to feel pain and sadness first-hand before that.

We need first to make mistakes before we know that we are wrong.

We regret the things in the past and yet at that very present moment we don’t even think what are the consequences.

We find the value of others when they are gone not when they were still alive.

We have food and yet we starve our selves just to look good for others while others have no food to eat.

We fight those who violate the rights of others and yet we are violating their own rights.

We seek peace and yet we create wars, chaos and fear.
We build nations and yet we destroy others.

We tend to make our selves educated and yet, are we really educated in the eyes of others?

We put rules and yet others are exempted to those rules.

We preach the moral values and religious things and yet our actions are contrary to that.

We advocate freedom and yet we put borders.

We want to improve our health by producing medications that are far more hideous than the natural.

We teach life’s meaning and yet we don’t know one bit what life really is.

This is the hypocrisy and the irony of life that we are living. 

SUBTLETY

You smile at me like you know me. You have tried to understand me.

You decided I was too complicated to comprehend and analyze, so you moved along and agreed without hesitation that I am different.

Shocker.

I hate to tell you this, but my mind is connected and wired in a strange manner that yet nobody I have ever encountered can begin to understand.

I think of things most people have never even realized, and I realize people in their confusion while trying to realize what I already have.

Confused? Try to follow, because I lead out and only notice things that people like me see.

Thoughts drown you daily, but for me it is the only way to swim and function.

Don't assume or complicate things because you'll find yourself coming to the conclusion of an unwavering mess, constantly overbearing your chest with lies you will regret with a hanging head and sunken shoulders.

Meditation is a synchronizing sanctuary where I spend most of my time alone.

I'm sorry I can't take you along because I never have before and I don't plan on trying anything new anytime soon. They call it space.

Don't try to see through me because you'll just reach a wall and a veil of hypnotism of the life I live, and the life I am living. Just take me as I am.

Avoid the deep stuff. You don't have to understand me, or even try to because I like the confirmation of my soul entrusted within myself and in a lockbox where my heart is the key.

Just shake your head and agree with me.

Accept what you see when you look at me. I'll share my thoughts, but it will cost a penny.

Just know you will never ever come close to actually knowing me.

I wear a mask that has the craftsmanship of subtlety. You do not know me. 

BEAUTIFUL ME

                

I am a drop of sunshine in a doubt of uncertainirty.

I am a comforting voice in a crowd of chaos.

You have a hard time following me? Try harder, because I lead out.

I am redemption after facing my darkest demons in the dark.

I am a smile in the presence of my deepest fears.

I am the same person in the light and the dark.

Genuine, honest, real. I am authentic.

I am a drop of sugar water in an ocean of salt.

I am a lense of clarification in a jumbled mess.

I am a reassuring hand on a shoulder of a black cloud. I am the silver lining you missed.

I am constant, a loyal companion.

I am an embrace at the end of a hard task.

I am victory.

I am beautiful. Beautiful me.

PLAIN BROWN WRAPPERS

When they were children with nipples

Budding over the lonely muscle that would eventually betray them

In love and in death

They read magazines advertising creams
that would make them as beautiful as movie stars

Movie stars we admired

Their breasts full and brimming worlds full of oceans and rivers.

These things came in Plain Brown Wrappers

Boxes stamped with words "bursting test,"

And, even though they filled balloons with water

And threw them at one another at birthday parties

They weren’t sure whether it meant
the maximum load to be borne by the bags and boxes themselves or...

The milky bosoms with fine blue lines, like our grandmother’s Rocking china, that would make someone love them

They wondered how to mix powdered milk when they had no water.

They want to received such a box out in the desert where Oxfam tissues are used to make tea.

So that their bones would grow crooked, drifted and their chest booted.

They dont know there is a debt to be paid between standing tall and sagging low

It will be painfully full and will stand in the blood and milk-stained dust of other girls who couldn’t wait to grow

I really hope they can bear without
bursting before they walk home across enchanted hearts.

TRAVELLING WITHOUT MOVING

There’s a cold sky and gulls in the new ploughing

And ice on the stretched water glazing the fields.

The year’s nearly done and I’ve not once taken this train till now

Not sat at this window, back facing the future

Watching the landscape unravel into what’s gone.

Your death knocked the thrive out of me

Knocked the thrive out of the year as well

The sky is spreading itself out and breaking open

The way that sometimes a poem does, or music, or light. All my life I’ve been trying and trying.

This full-mooned daylight is thin and cold
as the smell of a lemon

And I’m tired of fretting the mind over mysteries

I am nearly ready to give up and not understand

There’s an ash by a wall in a field above our house.

I go there in the season to find you in the empty branches

In the way the tree stands to the sky

The dogs quarter, snouts dropped to the smell that has them by the nose

I’m not far off that myself - hard on the scent when the bird has gone.

This is the holiest week of the year,
this descent into dark, into the formless heart of the matter

Our souls enter our bodies, hungry for experience

They run us around like the mice that live in the skirting and skitter across the floorboards in the stillness

Their quick, sure darts scoring the emptiness behind my gazing the eyes

I am travelling, am moving in stillness.
I am sure travelling in a train to bliss nest.

MY MAMAS HOUSE

My mother’s house is full of birds and lodgers

Sitting on the stairs, sleeping underneath the beds

And shinning up the drainpipes at the back

She’s dowmnstairs, cooking on a disconnected stove

With a cast iron skillet full of earrings, small pearl buttons lost from shirts, and silver collar studs.

My mother’s wardrobe’s full of ball-gowns

Sandwiches and biscuit barrels full of instant coffee, there’s granulated sugar in her dancing shoes

And mashed corn with black stew in the kitchen

She’s counting out her trifle dishes, knitting needles, crochet hooks, the food comic book and sixpences.

My mother’s landing’s full of women, queuing for the lodger

The young one with the torch and cycle clips; she’s looking for an egg and sweet patato pie and a Thermos flask of tea to tide them over

while the lodgers on the stairs begin a song her father sang

With choruses, rude verses, all the twiddly bits and harmonies.

They’re singing Dan maraya to her, we love you so dearly ma

while she scoops her creamy pap into amber sundae glasses

Adds angelica and violets, tiny roses made of marzipan and coffee flavoured biscuits, shaped like fans.

I was eternally safe...
In my mama's house